Help me understand Stamina/Magicka setups!

Daedric45 · August 2021

Hello all, I am fairly new to ESO, just been playing lately to get feel for the game and now I wanna get serious and committ to one character and level it up. That being said, heres my problem, and yes I looked up a lot of builds and did google searches on the subject, I am just not understanding what I am reading hence why I am here.

Before I begin I want to disclose that I do not like the fact that pretty much every class I see running around has a staff. I feel like staffs are for magic users not a NB running around using a staff to attack. Call me old fashion its fine lol. I know that the skill still fires off regardless of weapon equipped but its immersion breaking for me.

I wanna play a Magicka solo nightblade that uses traditional weapons, (daggers, maces, swords, bows) but I just don't understand how I am supposed to gear it or or what gear is important to me. I read that people are playing duel wield daggers as a NB magicka character but I thought stamina was for melee? I understand the part of putting points into magicka or stamina based on what skills you morph to just not the gearing and all.

Like the Mothers Sorrow set you hear all the time about, how is that useful for a NB that duel wields daggers or uses a bow? Is the gear that increases spell critical going to help my duel wielding at all with swords or daggers, bows? I thought spell critical is for ya know classes casting spells (in this game skills), like Necros and Sorcs?

I know I probably have all this wrong, just very confused and would like the confusion cleared up. Its a system I am not used to in mmos.

Thank you!

tsaescishoeshiner · August 2021

The Dual Wield skills that cost Stamina scale with Stamina and Weapon Damage. But the light attacks, heavy attacks and Ultimate ability for any weapon scale with whichever stats (Stamina/Magicka and Weapon Damage/Spell Damage) is higher.

I BELIEVE light attacks also now scale with whichever is higher, Spell Crit or Weapon Crit, but I'm not sure. I know ults do.

You probably won't use the Dual Wield ultimate, but light attacks are really important to DPS, and learning to light attack weave is recommended.

So the Magicka characters using Dual Wield aren't using the actual Dual Wield skills, they're using it for other reasons.

The benefits of using Dual Wield on mag:
- Dual Wield gives more Weapon and Spell Damage than any staff, so it still boosts your Magicka skills
- Daggers give you Critical Chance, which is really good on DPS builds.

The drawbacks:
- Since you're not using the Dual Wield skills, you have to depend on class & guild skills (some classes rely more on weapon skills than others)
- Your light and heavy attacks are melee.
- Your heavy attacks restore Stamina, not Magicka.
- You miss out on some good Destruction Staff passives

As far as immersion, I personally see staves and magic as very natural to Nightblades. Even stamblades use magic skills, anyway. Anyway, it's really fun to use melee weapons on a mag char lol, and vice versa.

ixthUA · August 2021

Each class can specialize in physical or magic damage.
Stamina, weapon crit and weapon damage will boost physical skills.
Magicka, spell crit and spell damage will boost magical skills.
There are a lot of players with stamina builds, using bows and melee weapons.

Wandering_Immigrant · August 2021

Is there any particular reason you're set on playing a Magicka night blade even though you seem to prefer stamina weapons? Many class abilities start off as mag but can be morphed to a stam version once it's morphable, this is true of all classes so don't be thrown off by that. There's really only a couple of night blade abilities a stamblade wouldn't use but a magblade would, and those abilities aren't very great anyway.

They play fairly similar, outside of magblade bomber builds. As someone who has both leveled I find the stam version to have a more natural feel to it, and that's just opinion but based on your weapon preference you would likely feel the same.

The stam version is generally considered the stronger of the two as well, though currently magblade bombers are all the rage, stamblades have a more timeless and we'll rounded skill set and don't fluctuate as much based on current trends.

fred4 · August 2021

The short answer is: If you want to play a nightblade with dual-wield plus bow, then you are a stamina nightblade.

Melee magicka nightblades do exist. I PvP on one and currently use dual-wield on the front bar, but you need a resto staff on the back bar. No ifs, no buts. Magicka nightblade lacks healing in PvP, particularly a burst heal. It has no class skill to fill that gap unless, possibly, if you give up Shadowy Disguise for the non-stealth morph. Not really, though. You are dependent on the resto staff. PvP magblades are infamous for it. In PvE the situation is entirely differet, because Swallow Soul + Sap Essence heal you more and can get you through a lot of content. Would you want to play with melee and stamina weapons on both bars, though? Not really.

In general magicka nightblades are melee / ranged hybrids. Soul Harvest / Incap Strike is meta in PvE and also pretty meta in PvP. That means you have to go in close for at least that. Since it's such a cheap ultimate this will happen frequently.

Everything is contingent on the level of content you play and your experience level. As always, overland, delves, public dungeons, most non-DLC dungeons (even on vet) and soloing most world bosses qualifies as easy content and it won't matter much how you build. You can make it work. If you don't want to set high-scores in the vet solo arenas you can probably build how you want too. People have done vet Maelstrom with the broom and bucket and I did the first 4 arenas on a stamblade with exclusively Psijic skills. However you're making things unnecessarily difficult in that case.

The take home point is: If you want to do content efficiently, then lore and "play as you want" goes out the window. You have to do what actually works unless you've played for 6 years and you're so bored out of your mind that you start gimping yourself for the challenge. On the other hand, if you want to join a vet trials progression guild, I am told the rules on your performance, if not your build, can be strict. You want to do 70K to 100K DPS on a trial dummy? That's where Mother's Sorrow and other meta sets come in. I have never gone for that myself in the past. I have started recently. Guys with fully optimised gear can apparently do 95K+ DPS on the dummy. With easily buyable / farmable sets, Mother's Sorrow, Medusa, vMA destro back bar and 2x crit pieces I have, thus far, only managed 70K. Apparently that may be borderline low to be accepted into a trials progression group. Mother's Sorrow is a good set, but only this is where you really need it.

Your problem is: You've picked up on what's recommended for some very specific content: The ultra-meta ultra-high-end veteran trials / progression scene. That's why Mother's Sorrow is being recommended to you. However you don't need that as a solo player. You may or may not want it anyway, but it's not a must. In my experience many newer players fall into this trap. Why is that? Because the high-end meta is well-established. Long-term players spend an inordinate amount of time doing research, beginning on the PTS before each new patch. They do theory-crafting, spreadsheets and tests to figure out how to eek out the last iota of damage in a veteran-trials scenario. They ultimately agree and this is something that can be objectively quantified. Even if different sets work best in different trials, due to mechanics, there is a relatively small number of meta sets and, due to the amount of research being done on those, that information is, at least, available and widely shared. There is data available and it's easy to talk about. Never forget that that's what it's for, though. If you're a solo player, this does not really apply to you. Indeed some of the most comfortable / OP solo gear, such as the Master's (Dragonstar Arena) 2H weapon + using Brawler (and Pale Order) is rarely talked about. If you were looking for my recommendation for what to run on a stam setup, any stam setup really, to get you comfortably throug vMA and vVateshran, that would be my top recommendation.

fred4 · August 2021

Wandering_Immigrant wrote: »

They play fairly similar, outside of magblade bomber builds. As someone who has both leveled I find the stam version to have a more natural feel to it, and that's just opinion but based on your weapon preference you would likely feel the same.

The stam version is generally considered the stronger of the two as well, though currently magblade bombers are all the rage, stamblades have a more timeless and we'll rounded skill set and don't fluctuate as much based on current trends.

Spoken from a PvP standpoint. I got to disagree with one thing: They do NOT play similarly in PvP. The similarities are superficial. I suppose if you compare nightblades to other classes, then they are similar in that they both have access to the same stealth toolkit. However as a long term melee magblade main, I am having a very hard time adapting to stamblade and I cannot really stress that enough. I even play my magblade with a lot of stam sustain rather than shields, so you would think the two classes played similarly. However where a stamblade can be fast outside of cloak, due to dodge rolling on the bow bar and a set like Gryphon, they feel dog slow in cloak. This has a profound impact on how they play. You are aguably more dependant on Shadow Image on the stamblade, whereas I have honed my magblade to not really need it. My magblade feels faster. It is free and unshackled compared to a stamblade. Cloak sustain reliably sheds aggro from NPCs and lets you run through players across a crowded battlefield. A stamblade can only dream of that. They tend to be more ambush-focused as a result, whereas I can point my perma-cloaking magblade anywhere any time, and I'll be there within a few seconds. I'm talking inside of keeps or in IC. The closest a stamblade comes to my magblade is if they combine Vampire with Darloc Brae, but it's still not quite the same. I will admit that, as a long time magblade, I have a comfort and affinity for it that I simply lack with stamblade. However the freedom to shed aggro and run rings around players and NPCs alike, fighting entirely on your own terms (until you get hard-countered), that is pretty real. The lack of damage is the drawback. The ease with which stamblade has damage in PvP, almost regardless of how you build, that's just not there with magblade.

fred4 · August 2021

It should be mentioned that the next patch will seriously change things up in terms of armor types. Whether that will change the viability of, say, a dual-wield / bow magicka spec, I'm not sure. Hybrid builds, in general, will probably be more viable though. The changes are pretty drastic. Can't say that I understand the implications yet, so this is all I can say.

fred4 · August 2021

One more thing to add: If you are a magicka nightblade you WILL want at least one of your weapons to be a staff, so you can use it to restore magicka via heavy attacks. It is possible to sustain so well that that will never be necessary, but you're leaving damage on the table in that case. In PvP having at least one magicka weapon is a must and none are better than the resto staff for restoring magicka from heavy attacks. In PvE, if you're solo, you're ideally wearing a set called False God. It and it's stamina counterpart (Vicious Ophidian) are the ideal solo sets. These sets are hard to get trial sets. One of the alternatives, however, is a set called Vengeance Leech, which you can just buy. These sets grant you sustain from kills and rather a lot of it. However there are some fights, notably the Minotaur fight in vVateshran, where they don't work well. This is why you'll want at least one weapon that restores your primary stat.

Speaking of sustain from kills, there is a destro staff passive that returns a lot of magicka when you kill with a destro staff ability. The trick is to lay down Elemental Blockade (or Unstable Wall), even if you don't use other destro skills. This will give you insane sustain, if you are dealing with lots of mobs / adds. It is very noticeable in a place like Skyreach, where your magicka will be permanently at 100% due to that passive.

Daedric45 · August 2021

Thanks for the advice guys, sorry it took so long to respond, been working but I may take a look at the Stamblade on Hack the Minataur site or AlcastQ. I am not a min/maxer and probably won't ever be good enough for trials, but yea soloing is probably what I will be doing mostly tbh.

I just have to figure out what race I wanna be now. I wouldn't mind being a DE because they are good at being Sta or Mag but I already have several DE alts (low level of course) so would rather try another race.

Daedric45 · August 2021

To answer the above post on why I want to play a Magblade. Honestly, its just the idea of using magic and daggers, kinda like a spellblade that appealed to me. The problem was I just didn't know enough about stats and gear to make one thats why I came here.

fred4 · August 2021

I recommend Hack the Minotaur for you as he posts a lot of solo builds that look fun. Alcast is rooted in the high-end scene.

fred4 · August 2021

Daedric45 wrote: »

I just have to figure out what race I wanna be now. I wouldn't mind being a DE because they are good at being Sta or Mag but I already have several DE alts (low level of course) so would rather try another race.

Wood Elves and Khajiits come to mind. Khajiits are probably meta right now and also cover mag and stam.

Daedric45 · August 2021

Ok thanks Fred4. Yea been watching a lot of HtM past several hours.